This invention relates to the construction of chairs and seating furniture, and in particular to such chairs which may be stacked for storage and which may be interconnected or ganged for use in rows.
The most widely known type of structure for linking or ganging chairs together is structure that is fixed in place on the chairs, such as that shown in Ware, et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,386,804. This patent shows each chair having applied to it a key on one side and an interlinking keyway on the other, so that ganged chairs can be separated merely by lifting a chair out of engagement with adjacent chairs.
There are instances, however, where it is desirable to remove the ganging structure from view when not in use. The Lieberman et al patent, U.S. Pat. No. 3,825,300, shows a ganging structure that is retractable, but that structure is still in view when retracted since it is attached to the legs, spaced down substantially from the seat. Mohr U.S. Pat. No. 3,614,158, on the other hand, shows a ganging device that is out of view when in its retracted position. The Mohr device, though, provides only a single member to connect the two chairs together, and the single member must be quite long to accommodate the distance between the chairs. Further, the Mohr chair is not shown to be a stackable chair, and stacking such a chair may cause special problems.
This invention relates to improvements to the apparatus described above and to solutions to the problems raised or not solved thereby.